Let’s for a moment throw away SmartMouth Communications’s aspirational motto, “communication is the currency of success.” Instead, let’s look at what 2020 is teaching us about the more fundamental importance of communication and consider rephrasing it to be “communication is the currency of life.”
2020 has been quite a year so far (and we still have one more quarter to go!). Due to the unusual confluence of events this year, and under the klieg lights of competing crises, communication as a practice has revealed itself to be more vital and more challenging than ever.
Leaving politics aside, I think we all can agree we’ve seen a surge in the delivery and consumption of communication from multiple angles. There are increasingly more ways in which communication comes to the fore, but in 2020 in particular, there’s also been urgency. Communication is fueling our opinions and actions in an almost exaggerated, but also necessary, way this year.
Let’s take a closer look …
Pandemic. Public health is as much about communication as it is about medicine or science. We are helpless, and potentially in harm’s way, in the face of any outbreak, let alone a global pandemic, which makes communication absolutely essential. At the end of the day, we all make our own decisions and judgment calls about what we as individuals will do to take care of ourselves, but before we can do that, we depend on communication from experts and leaders.
Protests. Protests are, by definition, a way for people and their voices to join together in collective communication. This form of group communication is meant to create impact and to have influence – louder and more powerfully than any one voice can achieve. Whatever we may think of protests in 2020, they have made themselves a prominent element of our society’s soundtrack this year.
Storms and Fires. Public safety, like public health, is as much about communication as it is about containment and rescue efforts. When it comes to natural disasters, communication is a matter of life and death. Public safety officials, leaders, and citizens alike rely on communication to save lives, homes, and businesses. Warnings, advisories, offers of help and shelter are all critical communications.
Campaigns. Campaigns are notorious noisemakers. However, campaigns are an essential way of communicating the choices we have in a democracy. This year, because we face so many dire issues – health, safety, economic, to name just a few – campaign communications are layered on top of and in the midst of constant, competing, and compelling crises across the country. Political leanings aside, I think we all can agree that campaign communications this year are more intense and more attention-grabbing, because they are more co-mingled with day-to-day events/crises than usual.
It’s been one heck of a year so far and, from where I sit, it’s been fascinating. Not only is there a tidal wave of communication coming our way almost all the time, but we have the need and the time to consume it all. It’s a lot to wade through, there’s no doubt, but consider the alternative: without communication, we’d face multiple risks and threats right now without knowing it and without being able to protect ourselves and our families. Perhaps communication actually is the currency of life.
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